Deadline

by Randy Alcorn

  Janet looked surprised but relieved. “Well, I’m glad you told him. I think it’s best.”

  There was an awkward silence before Janet asked Carly, “Are you ready to go?”

  “Not quite. I’ll be a few minutes—need a quick makeup job.” Carly headed back to the bathroom and shut the door. Though Jake was miserable, a load seemed to have lifted from Carly.

  Jake and Janet were left alone, both pale, weak, and drained, except for the undercurrent of rage in Jake that Janet’s presence momentarily subdued. Jake felt he should give her a hug or something, but somehow he couldn’t. Something seemed different about Janet. Her face had more lines, and her lower lip looked rough and swollen, as if it had been bitten hard. Her eyes watered, like someone who needed to cry but didn’t have any tears left.

  Staring vacantly, she said to Jake, “It keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?”

  Jake nodded. They were standing four feet apart, each looking like someone who needed someone else to reach out to him, neither feeling the strength to be the first to reach.

  After a few more awkward moments, Jake said, “I’ve got to go, Janet. There’s something I have to do.”

  Janet’s probing look cut through Jake’s calm and measured voice. She knew it was too calm and measured. She hadn’t forgotten that look in his eyes either. Jake was angry, and someone was going to pay. Janet felt relieved it wasn’t she or Carly, but feared for whoever it was.

  Jake was out the door before Janet could say more. As he raced down the apartment steps, the volcanic anger within him swirled as in a lidded cauldron, a pressure cooker poised for eruption. Jake knew right where he wanted to be when it blew.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The soldier embarked on a top priority mission that could wait for no one, and from which nothing could deter him. He swerved in and out of traffic, and within fifteen minutes pulled into the only space open in the front parking lot of Monroe High. The car next to him sported two bumper stickers—“Just Say No to Drugs” and “D.A.R.E. to Keep Your Kids Off Drugs.” He didn’t care about the “Reserved for Faculty” sign in front of his parking space. He was here to engage the enemy.

  Jake started to leap out of the car a fraction of a second before he flipped back the handle to release the door. The pain in his left shoulder fueled his scorching anger, making one more thing for which he would blame Ms. Beal.

  Like a race walker, with determined and efficient strides, Jake marched to the front office. Papers rustled at the receptionist’s desk as he pushed the glass door open. His abrupt and exaggerated movements attracted startled gazes from all over the office.

  Diane Koos recognized Jake’s profile from his column sketch. She’d met him when he spoke at commencement a few years ago.

  “Hello, Mr. Woods,” she said in a calm voice. “How can I help you?”

  Rather than defuse the time bomb that was Jake Woods, her casual and friendly tone only accelerated the countdown. Though sincere, in Jake’s eyes she was condescending and pretentious.

  “You can help me by telling me where that witch Beal is.”

  “Mr. Woods, perhaps you should sit down. I don’t think…”

  “I don’t care what you think. Tell me where she is now.”

  Faced with this alternative, Diane Koos said something she’d later regret. “Well, I believe she’s teaching health this period, in room 203. She’ll be done in another fifteen minutes, and I’ll arrange with her to meet you. Now if you’ll just sit—”

  By then Jake was gone.

  “Mr. Woods, wait, you can’t just … she’s not done.”

  “She’ll be done when I get there,” Jake said, by this time out the office door and headed to the classroom.

  Class skippers and hall wanderers parted in front of Jake. He’d only been in the classroom halls once, to speak to the journalism class, but he quickly found the 200 hall. Within moments he saw 203 on his left, door closed. Without breaking stride Jake yanked open the door and barged into the room.

  He had expected to be in the back of the room, looking over students’ shoulders to eyeball their teacher at the front. He planned to zero in on his target from a distance. Not having run reconnaissance, however, Jake discovered he was in the front of the class, looking into the eyes of twenty-five students, and standing only a few feet from Ms. Beal.

  This wasn’t a good beginning. He’d entered with all the grace of a junkyard dog, and now here he was. Jake quickly scoped out the room. On the board over his right shoulder was written “Good Sex is Safe and Consensual.” On the teacher’s desk were a half dozen different colors and textures of condoms, a diaphragm, IUD, and packets of birth control pills, laid out neatly on a tray to be passed around the class. Next to them were brochures from Planned Parenthood and a local abortion clinic. Jake recognized the distinctive design immediately because Carly showed him the same brochure when she’d said she was pregnant.

  After a startled pause, a polite but strong voice fired Jake’s direction. It seemed out of place coming from the stylishly dressed petite blond. “Excuse me,” Ms. Beal said, “we have a class going on here. Can I help you find—”

  “I’m Carly Woods’s father. I’ve got some things to say to you.”

  “Oh, hello, Mr. Woods. I’m glad to meet you/’ Ms. Beal said, but the expression on her face wasn’t so sure. “I’ll be done here in just a few minutes and then we can talk.”

  “I’m not waiting.” Jake loaded and fired his first round. “We’ll talk now. Who do you think you are giving my daughter and her jerk of a boyfriend your filthy rubbers? She’s dying. And it’s your fault. How does it feel to give a death sentence to a teenage girl?”

  The blood drained from the teacher’s face, only to be quickly replenished by a crimson rush.

  “Mr. Woods, I’m not responsible for your daughter’s choices. I tried to save her life by helping her have safe sex. If I hadn’t, she’d have gotten AIDS long ago. And,” this was her heavy artillery, “it’s not my fault you weren’t there for your daughter. Don’t blame me for your failure as a parent.”

  “My failure?” The truth hit close to home, but coming from this woman it was too much. “This isn’t about me, Ms. Beal. It’s about you. You’re the one that’s been brainwashing my daughter—and all these kids who think they’re getting the truth from you.” Jake, an imposing figure for the twelve inches he stood above Ms. Beal, waved a big left arm at the class.

  “Mr. Woods, I—”

  “You told her staying away from sex was unrealistic. You told her she could have sex without worrying as long as she just carried your magic condoms. Do you get a commission for every one you distribute,” Jake shouted, “or do you own the whole stinkin’ rubber company?”

  A few gasps and a brave chuckle surfaced. Jake felt he’d scored a few points. The twenty-five Monroe students couldn’t have been paying better attention than if they had been told the class would end with a quiz and anyone flunking it would be executed by firing squad.

  “I teach these students because I care about them. Get your head out of the sand, Mr. Woods. Teenagers have sex. That’s a reality. So do we let them die, or do we do what’s best for them, even if head-in-the-sand moralists don’t like it?” Ms. Beal was hitting some targets herself.

  “Yeah, right,” Jake came back. “But it’s not the moralists who are dying from AIDS. It’s you free-thinking, whatever comes natural, no self-control, have sex if you feel like it types. And the kids you lied to, and the innocent babies, they’re the ones dying.”

  Jake surprised himself by throwing in the abortion issue. Where did that come from? It didn’t escape Ms. Beal’s notice.

  “What are you, some right-to-life fanatic? I thought you were a journalist, not a right-wing preacher! Now get out of my—”

  Jake picked up the contraceptive tray with all the samples, holding it out as evidence toward Ms. Beal.

  “I suppose you’re offering these kids clean needles and teaching them how to
take safe drug injections? After all, they’re going to do drugs anyway, so it’s your job to teach them how to do it safely. God knows their parents are too stupid to teach them how to do drugs the right way.”

  Ms. Beal was so furious she started a sentence three times. Jake wasn’t going to give her a fourth try. Pointing an accusing finger he said, “Why don’t you tell them, ’Just say no to sex.’ Why not give their parents bumper stickers that say ’DARE to keep your kids off sex?’ Instead of teaching them how to dodge cars and sending them out on the freeway, why don’t you teach them to stay off the freeway in the first place?”

  Jake realized most of what he was saying he’d heard from Finney and Sue. Apparently it made a deeper impression than he’d realized, but for the moment he was grateful. It was good ammo, and he felt like he was taking this hill from the enemy.

  “And,” Jake continued his charge, “why don’t you tell them about all the studies and people’s experiences that say sex before marriage is bad for your mental health, that it increases the probability of divorce and family breakdown and serious problems with children. If you won’t tell them, let me. I should know. I ruined my own marriage.”

  It startled Jake to hear himself say this. His admission gave Ms. Beal the opening she needed. Her voice was trembling, but her words were measured.

  “Don’t project your guilt onto me or these students. Being a lousy husband and parent is your problem. And don’t you dare hang some Puritan morality around our necks and try to make us feel guilty just because we happen to think sex is natural and good.”

  Jake was loading his next round. “Why don’t you stop dragging these kids down to your moral level, Ms. Beal? I hear you get your kicks out of being Monroe’s Patron Saint of Teen Sex!”

  “How dare you! My choices and the choices of these students are none of your business, Mr. Woods. You have no right to take over this classroom and spout off your ignorant hateful propaganda.”

  “But you have the right to spout off your propaganda every day?” Jake had no intention of retreating. “How about some equal time? I know I’m just a lowly ignoramus parent and all, and I have a lot of nerve to think my daughter is more my business than yours. I mean, you’re paid to take care of these kids, we parents just take care of them for free. You think you know what’s best for them? Well, when my little girl dies, just remember it was you who killed her, just as surely as if you gave her a loaded gun and helped her pull the trigger!”

  “You—”

  “I’m not finished, Ms. Beal. How many other kids in this school will die because they’ve bought your sales pitch? How many are already HIV positive and don’t have a clue? How many carry around their industrial strength condoms thinking a stupid little piece of latex will save their lives? Why don’t you try telling the truth, even if it goes against your ideology? I ought to sue you. Maybe Carly and I will sue you. You make me sick.”

  “Get out, get out of my classroom—you have no right to be here!” The normally confident and composed Ms. Beal was screaming now. A gob of spittle landed on her otherwise impeccable red lapel.

  Jake pointed to the classroom. “Our children should be able to trust you, Ms. Beal. And Carly did. She trusted you, and now she has this plague. And you haven’t even visited her. You’re too busy raising up your next crop of victims.”

  He raised his voice on the last sentence to make sure Ms. Beal heard him twenty feet down the hall, where she was now running the other direction. Jake’s head of steam dissipated as the object of his scorn receded. Suddenly, for the first time, he felt embarrassed.

  Jake glanced self-consciously at the class. They looked as if they were posed for a 1914 photograph, where the shutter was opened for five seconds so everyone had to be perfectly still. No gum chewing, no sound of tearing paper, no packing and unpacking of books, no looking at the clock. Nothing. Jake realized he had the most captive audience of his life, and he owed them an explanation.

  “Uh, hello class. Any questions?”

  There was a ripple of nervous laughter.

  One girl half raised her hand, big brown eyes heavy with water. Jake recognized her—hadn’t he seen her with Carly when he bumped into her at the mall?

  “Is Carly really going to die?”

  “Well, some people have the HIV for years before getting AIDS. But usually … yes, Carly’s probably going to die. Eventually, we all are.” Once again he surprised himself. “Life here is short. It’s like … a window of opportunity. And what we do here really matters. Don’t waste your life. Maybe some accident or something will happen, but this isn’t an accident. It’s a choice. Don’t choose to throw your life away on this safe sex myth. Or any other myth.”

  Jake felt a story emerge from deep inside him. “When I was in college I felt pressured to have sex. Not that I didn’t want to, but there’s a right time and place. And I did it at the wrong time and place, and kept doing it. And the people who seemed with it,’ they kept saying it was okay. But you know what? It wasn’t like in the movies. It didn’t satisfy. I felt empty. And I started using people. I didn’t respect the girls I slept with and I didn’t respect myself. Do any of you know what I mean?”

  Several heads nodded.

  “I even used my reputation as a defender of women’s rights to get girls in bed with me.” It sounded so crass. But it was true, so he said it.

  “Some of you know better. I never went to church as a kid. I still don’t. But if you were taught sex should be reserved for marriage, don’t ever apologize for it. It’s right. I never thought I’d admit it, but deep inside I’ve known it for years. It’s right. And because it’s right it’s also smart. It’s the best way to live. A good friend taught me that.

  “And that’s what good friends do. They tell you the truth. They don’t buy into the lies we’re always being told. Look, I know about lies. I should. I work for a newspaper. Most of what we say is true, but in some of the most important areas of life, we tell the truth selectively, and sometimes the bottom-line impression is misleading, sometimes a downright lie. I’ve done it for years. But I’m not going to do it anymore.”

  Jake heard himself make a vow he hadn’t composed till that very moment.

  “Listen kids, I need to apologize. I shouldn’t have barged in here like this.” He smiled sheepishly. “You have to admit it wasn’t your basic boring class, but still, I shouldn’t have. I meant every word I said. And Ms. Beal may mean well—I’m sure she does—but I think she’s dead wrong. I’ve interviewed lots of people, seen lots of life, and I think she couldn’t be more wrong than she is. And one day you’ll know that. I can only pray”—why did I say that word—“I can only hope that you won’t have to learn the hard way like I did. Or Carly…”

  Jake turned away and buried his face in his hands. He didn’t know how long he’d stood there before feeling a gentle but firm hand grasp his arm. Turning, he saw a blurry Mr. French, the principal who seemed so pleased to meet him when he spoke at commencement, but was so obviously upset to see him now.

  Mr. French turned him toward the door, quietly saying, “This isn’t the place, Mr. Woods. Come with me.”

  Almost as an afterthought, the principal turned and said to the somber students, “Class dismissed.”

  Jake saw the room full of kids, most still in shock, a few crying, all very quiet. They slowly got up. One strangely familiar looking girl walked up briskly and caught Jake and Mr. French in the hallway. It was Molly, Doc’s daughter. He’d seen her at the funeral or he wouldn’t have recognized her now. She looked so old, her face hardened. Her short skirt, low-cut blouse, and lavish make-up made a statement he didn’t want to hear right now.

  “Hi, Molly. How are you?” Jake had seen her often over the years when he’d dropped by to pick up Doc, but realized now he didn’t really know her. She’d never been a person to him, just Doc’s daughter.

  “There’s something I just don’t get,” Molly said. Her forceful presence and determined approach remind
ed Jake of Doc as much as her piercing eyes, auburn hair, and olive complexion. Her intensity even convinced Mr. French to delay his determined march away from the classroom.

  “What’s that, Molly?”

  “Carly made a presentation in this class, and she read from one of your columns. Ms. Beal thought it was so good she made copies for the whole class. I have it right here.” Molly pulled out the goldenrod photocopy from her folder.

  Jake recognized the distinctive heading with his profile sketch from the Tribune. It was titled “Let’s Face the Facts about Teen Sex.” The date was eleven months earlier. He couldn’t remember exactly what he said, but he did recall some lively discussions with Finney and Sue about this column.

  “It talks about why schools ought to pass out condoms to kids, to keep them from getting AIDS,” Molly said. Looking down to scan the paper, she went on. “You said we should be realistic that lots of kids are going to have sex. That sexual activity isn’t for everyone, but kids have the right to choose whether to be sexually active, and schools must teach them their options, since most parents don’t bother. Here, I’ll read the last part word for word. You said, ’Parents have no right to sacrifice their kids’ lives by interfering with our schools’ efforts to teach responsible sex. Just because the religious beliefs of a minority make them uncomfortable with sex in general and birth control in particular is no reason for the rest of us to punish our nations children by denying them the necessary education and equipment for safe sex.”’

  Molly looked Jake in the eyes. “Do you remember writing this?”

  Jake remembered. He wished he didn’t. He stared at the cracks between the off-white floor tiles, wishing they would suck him into oblivion.

  “So what gives you the right to yell at Ms. Beal? Everything she’s told us is the same stuff Dad said, the same stuff you say in your columns. You wrote it,” Molly’s voice shook with anger, “maybe you better go back and read it.”